Emmanuel Macron: The Audacity of Humility and the Hope of Moderation

Is Emmanuel Macron doomed to be a lame duck President from the start?

Written for The Spectator between the two rounds of the 2017 French presidential election, this piece asks whether a centrist President will be able to govern without a clear parliamentary majority and whether such a scenario is fundamentally at odds with the Fifth Republic as originally envisioned by De Gaulle.

Why Macron should give us hope of democratic renewal in France

This piece was originally published on OpenDemocracy on 24 March 2017. It argues that the most remarkable aspect of the 2017 French presidential election is not the rise of the populist extremes but rather the reshuffling of mainstream politics provoked by Emmanuel Macron's candidacy. The article also situates Macron's social-democratic-liberalism in a broader historical and intellectual tradition.